


Strangers

by The_Traveling_Plum



Category: Andromeda Six (Visual Novel)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Comfort, F/F, F/M, First Dates, Gen, Gender-Neutral Traveler, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Smut, Species-Neutral Traveler, Violence, noir, space western
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:08:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22607521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Traveling_Plum/pseuds/The_Traveling_Plum
Summary: Sometimes, the safest person to loosen up with is a complete stranger. But when a blind date goes wrong in a seedy bar at Nos Vega, a cynical amnesiac has to question that old wisdom, as they pick up the pieces with a battered gunman who remembers too much.In what's left of the night, they'll learn that connections can be made with the most thorough of strangers... and that the best companions are sometimes the most dangerous.
Relationships: Juniper Nyux/Traveler
Comments: 13
Kudos: 31





	1. A City of Strangers

Some things in this life you can only find out for yourself. While other things you can pick up, if you listen well.

Take a turn down that alley where no signs will point. Find that flaking door that the streetlights missed, in the side of a building you’ve barely noticed is there in the ongoing, weather-cracked adobe of the block. Mind the graffiti under UV: there may be new warnings on the plaster, friendly suggestions, a streetwise code in the corner that your light almost missed, but which can give you a name you might be able to drop-- or avoid-- to pass your night in this district with some peace. And little taken out of you than what you fairly pay for. But then… guarantees don’t exist here on Teranium.

Don’t lie to the doorman: they remember faces well, and survived a long time for a droid. Swipe your chip. Lift your coat if they ask you to. Be polite to the next guard you see, because they’re the ones who’re organic, and will offer advice if they like you. Now take the stairs where the next droid waits: the one modeled after that dead star. Do not try any of the doors along the way; _this_ robot can only help you so far. But once you make it to those velvet curtains dark as skin, part them and take in the musky smoke clinging to their folds, the slow pulses of light beyond, the deep throb and tremble of the bass, your choices are yours. As are the real risks.

Assume nothing with the dancers: some might let you peek; others want their distance; don’t be stingy, either way. Don’t bother the musicians with drinks; most came in high on something. Try to remember that the cameras are cleverer than you, the dealers frustrated showmen at heart, and the gamblers in Silta Vie silk are _not_ the real sharks; that’ll be the quiet one in the corner you missed, but who never missed you. And of course, never bet what you aren’t ready to lose.

The bartender is your best friend, and your worst enemy: they hold the veto power in the room as keeper of the kegs. And they truly do know everything. Because if the drinks aren’t doing it for you, and you wield your words right, the bartender might drop a tip on a corner stall in the bathroom, a room down the corridor, a time on the rooftop bleached pale from the desert sun, where you can pick up a finger-thin vial for a reasonable price. Be a purist; never try the mix. And if it’s a pill, cut a sliver of the first one, first. And most of all, even if the evening turns around-- the bassline chasing the beat of your blood, new patterns sparking through the swirl of lights above you, around you, and in the tips of your nerves-- do not go back for seconds. That’s when they’ll hike up the price, in more than one sense.

You are going to slip up, somewhere; that’s a guarantee. But play enough cards right in that little-known, little-written world behind the peeling door, and you can still walk away a little wiser. And if it’s your inclination, you can return another night, another time; a touch more armed and ready to take what you can from this place that’ll never earn a chapter in the System’s books. Because Orsanna's Guard has an understanding with this world: it doesn’t exist, while they’re in uniform. And to everyone behind the chipped door, you’re just another stranger, stopping by for the night. Which is all you’ll ever be, for all the times you come back sharper, meaner, greedier… or just the last. 

It’s not the benefit of my wisdom I’m setting down; rather, it belongs to two crewmates who figured I was ready to listen well before our ship touched down. But reel in their advice sitting on diametric sides of the law, bind them together like a traveler’s guide… and I can see why some people continue to risk it all in these places. Disappearing is no mean feat. But for a few hours a night, in these private nooks of a city on a desert world, you can get pretty close to it.

But if you’re one of those odd strangers who walks through that door with nothing-- no memories tipping their weight over behind your eyes, no faces to hide from, no checking account glaring in red or green, no grip of need working their way through damp fingers, no knowledge beyond the here and now-- in short, if you’re already a ghost in the daylight, what does this place have to offer, exactly?

Possibly a place to sit. And something to drink. Don’t try the candied-beetles in the bowls. Though if you don’t trust the drinks here either-- after that one moment you spot the ring of grime at the bottom of a fresh cup, and figure it’s not part of _your_ wine-- then a glass of ice will do.


	2. Dangerous Friends

Something about the way the bar feels warns me this isn’t the wisest idea. And that it’s good thing I kept my coat on.

The sandstone ‘arc’ of The Arc runs its course from nearly one end of the wall to the next: hewn out of solid rock like the oldest buildings of this district of Nos Vega… and like them, riddled with some generations’ worth of blaster shots and bullet holes. Most of them coming from the direction of the dance floor; prudence, I guess, from the first one who opened this place. But unlike some of the founding buildings of this district, this bar has also seen a good share of happier times-- judging from how my sleeves are staying put on the stone, there might be seven years-worth of _Fire Eater_ shots still on this side. It might be another few years before Oppo scours the bar; they probably want it to last. 

“Fantastic.” I pry my sleeves off the counter, tipping one wrist up to check how much of a laundry job this will be. Then how much that might cost in a desert city. But an eloquent click arrests my thoughts, coming from down the unmanned bar: like too much tongue tapping against too many teeth.

“Di _sss_ graceful.”

The Arc’s proprietor slides through the crush of bodies leaning into the bar; not a bad feat, for a saurian standing at two meters vertical, and almost three horizontal. Their thick tail barely stirs the throng, closing again behind them like a pond after a snake; it coils down and smartly snaps the bar’s side-door after them.

Now I realize what I must look like: one elbow raised, peering into the sleeve; it’s just wide enough for a knife. The Arcnos owner grabs a leather apron from a hook: “You think thi _sss_ place is a junkies’ house. No _sss_ ervice-- you come in, you poison yourself, you go.” 

I decide they aren’t looking for a comment. I lower my arm again. 

Oppo flicks on a chrome keg dull with sand, waits for the groan, and catches in a series of tumblers that clear, ripe-smelling flow leaving the spigot. They slide this to a trio of waiting women in mesh, hiss an apology, then turn their amber-bright eyes to me, no comment on what might be in my sleeves. “ _Ssso_. Friend of the _Astrometer._ What do you need?”

For a razor-edge moment, I’m tempted to give them the truth. But then that purple tongue flicks hopefully, curls behind a serrated grin, and I remember where we are. “A cup of ice. A friend of mine got into an incident in your club in the back.” 

I keep my eyebrows flat, letting them know what sort of incident. Oppo’s thin pupils flex; their teeth part, as though someone punched them too under the bar. “…Deepe _sss_ t apologie _sss_ , but we have no ice. Not with the water rationing rules from the new Council, you _sss_ ee.” Now they give me a look, like they’re going to let that question slide for a friend of a friend. Who might get themselves shot in Teranium by tomorrow. “Fortunately, Oppo alway _sss_ looks after their guests.” 

“Good to know. Your security seems just as busy as your servers tonight.”

But the proprietor has already ducked under the bar. A weight scrapes in staccato across the sandstone floor before it hums to life… at the wrong pitch. They curse, thump the machine; it changes its tune. I make my hands relax, then think better of putting them down on the bar-top.

“Next time you see your bouncers, tell them to watch the front row to the dancers’ stage: my friend had to handle one pervert herself just a few minutes ago. Hence the ice we’re asking for.” I let my voice drag on the last part; that, at least, can scratch a reaction from them.

“Mr. Nyux wa _sss_ not there to help?”

Oppo is still fiddling under the bar with that mysterious machine. Between its whirring and the nasal blare of music above, they don’t hear me stop.

“…He was a bit preoccupied, then. He might have been a little late in pulling that man away.”

“ _Sss_ trange. Juniper never drinks. Here, at least.”

 _That hasn’t changed,_ I want to tell them. But the dirty PVC of the booth comes back; the twitch of his long hand that grew to a clench that grew to a white-knuckled shudder on the table, as he suddenly lost his words for the place he’s obliged to call ‘home’. “…We all have our moments. If you don’t have any ice, Oppo, what exactly are you looking for down there?”

I fold my arms, hands safely in elbows, and lean in to peer past the bar. It might have been the wrong idea: crouched in the dark, their muscular tail flicking over the floor, Oppo offers a guess on why no other sentient species shares their planet in the glare of Callius-X: they might have been run down on the mesa, about ten million years back.

Tonight, the barman's tapered teeth flash my way; then they crack the hatch of a metal bin. White smoke unfurls, rolling down to the gritty floor in a wave of cold I can feel from the top of the bar. “Old technology, but reliable. Still easy to find liquid nitrogen chamber _sss_ at good price in Nos Vega. Of cour _sss_ e, not everyone uses them for mixing drinks.”

They let me imagine, emptying a jar of steel ingots into a grooved column, then lowering it through the fog. Bubbles froth and snap. Oppo promptly closes the hatch, then rises with a grin of ‘all is well’, clawed hands planting with a casual click on the bar-top. “A few minute _sss_ of your time, friend of the _Astrologer._ And rest assured: thi _sss_ is not Ms. Aya’s first time here in The Arc. A popular woman knows how to look after her _sss_ elf.” Their grin never drops; then their head inclines in a precise, conspiratorial bow. “And as for you… you keep good friend _sss_.” 

For a bad moment, I wonder if Oppo knew exactly what happened in the alley tonight: after Aya was bundled out of the club, and June and I split up to search for our doctor. 

But the saurian has turned away, ambling to the other end of the bar at a rap on the rock from a customer. A party is coming in. Six shots-- iridium green-- slip into one man’s cybernetic hand like bullets in a barrel. The bionic answers in a local tongue, fricatives firing over the bar; Oppo just smiles, bobs their head. And I remember the way they shied from June, the hour we touched down on the private strip in the salvage yard.

A break in the orders; Oppo returns. As they lay one inquiring hand on the nitrogen chamber, I ask the question: “You’ve got a lot of confidence in June. He’s a popular man here, too?”

For an instant, those slit pupils snap tight, shrinking to a hair. Then they blink, and remember to smile. “He look _sss_ like the type, doesn’t he? But no, no; Mr. Nyux has alway _sss_ kept to himself here. Clean as-- how you _sss_ ay-- a pipe.” They still haven’t touched his nickname.

“Whistle, you mean.” Another guest jostles past, faux carapace grazing my back; one look tells me that one’s not worth an argument. “…If that’s the case, I’m surprised you never tried to hire him. Barring a few slips, he can offer some tight security for this place.”

Oppo’s eyes say: no offense taken. Their forked tongue flicks back through their teeth, and this time, I know it’s nerves. “Oppo wouldn’t dream of taking Mr. Nyux from Cpt. Lynch’s ship: the captain would never give up a good gun.” Another lidless blink, slick membrane slipping over their eyes; then that smile returns. “In uncertain times, the best companion _sss_ are often the most dangerous.” 

The bar is thankfully dark, the mass of bodies growing; they don’t see how my fingers have gripped the inside of my elbows, folded still on the counter. Then a thin beep from below; Oppo reaches down, lifts the nitrogen chamber hatch, and scoops out a handful of chilled steel ingots. They drop into a tumbler with a violent shiver, hissing against the sand-scoured tin. “…Ju _sss_ t a little proverb from Nos Vega.” The proprietor shrugs. “Who el _sss_ e can protect you so well?”

They knew, all right. If not all of what happened tonight, then how it will all turn out.

The cup slides across the counter, rim already pale with frost, sweating where my hand takes it. “For Ms. Aya. Most regrettable, thi _sss_ night.” Another rap of knuckles down the bar; Oppo waves it off. Then from an unseen seam of their tunic, they draw a plain, palm-sized box-- like an archaic deck of cards-- and hold it out to me. “The _Andrometer_ will be staying a while, ye _sss_? Quite a hole in the hold that Oppo’s junker _sss_ must patch. Please give the crew Oppo’s apologies, and compliment _sss_. They wish them welcome, again, to Nos Vega.”

“Why didn’t you pass this to the captain?”

“Quite simply, Cpt. Lynch alway _sss_ stays on the ship.” An arch of that hairless brow. “You take a man out of Goldis, but not Goldis out of the man.”

“Aya said something like that. Though hers has more to do with flagpoles.”

“As usual.” Our host chuckles: a strange sound, if you’re missing cheeks or standard lips. But the mirth is there. My hand takes the box; it doesn’t so much as rattle, balancing easy between finger and thumb.

Three hard knocks on the bar now. “Ay, lizard-man-- you holdin’ the drinks? We’da stayed out in the fuckin’ dunes if we wanted dry.”

The Arc’s owner bristles, ancient teeth lengthening. But in the next second, they smooth down their maw, and turn. “There may be a place opening in the scrapyard _sss_ oon. For Oppo’s ‘employee’ who wa _sss_ supposed to be here this hour. Na _sss_ ty work, fighting other junker _sss_.” 

A smile seems the best answer this time. Or an empty barstool; I give them both. Oppo’s mild hiss of farewell is cut by the next line of patrons coming down the bar: a bionics gang, by the looks of it, cybernetics like scorpion limbs curling out of ceramic spines. I suddenly hope the missing bartender is making good headway across town. 

* * *

Between the bar and the far curtain to the strip-club-- where Aya met her ‘accident’--, a nondescript doorway leads to the lower floors of The Arc. For business, pleasure, or another brand of escape, they’re never specific; but by tacit consent, our injured pilot is holed up there, soon to be followed by the rest of the crew. The only guard to be seen by that door is an Arcnos with sunken, cinder-gray hide; one bionic eye blinks red, scanning the dancefloor and the rock walls hemming it in. There’s little doubt that that one hands out the passes.

This time, I duck from their eye and join the wash of bodies on the floor: boiling with limbs synthetic, natural, and borrowed. A crack opens in the river of movement, running to one of the sandstone pillars bracing the center of the room. I follow it there, make a half-turn around from the doorman’s eyes, and open Oppo’s compliments to the crew. 

Given all the things that pass through Nos Vega in neat, unmarked packages, this one isn’t so bad. Especially when I remember I’m traveling with mercenaries.

Inside are five temporary keycards-- chipped at the edges-- for five rooms at The Arc, marked deluxe. Though I almost miss them at first: packed snug at the top are five condoms wrapped in festive red foil. ‘Enjoy the _Rings of Fire_ ’-- the print says in the next throb of dance lights-- ‘Snap and Release; Built-in Lubricating Action.’ An impossibly-conical volcano rises from the foil, smoking at the tip.

If I was a traveler before my accident, I really can’t say. But something tells me this is definitely Nos Vega hospitality.

A lull opens in the music; the mixer changes tracks; a Spartan bassline thumps under new lights, pulsing white and beyond black. Cybernetics and neon ink light up across the room. I’m sliding that box closed, tucking it in my coat and wondering whom to pass it to without giving the captain a coronary, when a ripple bursts open in the crowd.

“ _Holy fuck!_ You’re still--! No, I’m sorry, man. Sorry. It’s my fault; I didn’t see you there--”

“--Neither did I. It looks like we’re both enjoying a late night.”

That soft, cool Orion twang freezes me by the pillar. I wait for the black light, then bring one eye past the curve of bullet-flecked stone. 

Two strides over on the other side of the column is a telltale silhouette: broad in the shoulder and lean down the back, standing half-a-head over the tide of the crowd. His white shirt blazes in the dark; a rifle is slung over his shoulder. The club lights bleach his dirty-blonde hair to curls of ash as June bends down to the Kitalphan guest in his grip: thick in the chest and glinting with rings, but half keeled over, as though just saved from a fall.

Another winter-white pulse: now I see it’s the mate of that man in the alley.

“Look, _look._ It’s not those two I’m here for. All right?” The Kitalphan finds his footing, twitches at his metal-capped jacket, wrenched all down one side. “I’m just doin’ a run, man, for my buddy’s Rustspike. He left it in the strip club; can’t function without it. Goes into shock in about three hours--”

“--Where is he now?” June cuts him off, not a rise to his voice. He hasn’t let go of the man’s elbow; the latter stops struggling, the stockier one by far, but held upright and in place with no effort. I watch my shipmate’s back, its hair-trigger stillness through the toss of bodies. One hand stays on the strap of his rifle, half-twisted in his grip.

“…Headin’ to his boyfriend’s place. All right?” There’s a new hiss in the Kitalphan’s answer; extra oxygen seeping in. “He’s not comin’ back here. Not after I told him about what you ca--” 

“-- _That_ wasn’t necessary.” The metal rasp in June’s answer cuts low across the floor. The man in his grip suddenly bends, soundless, the crook of his arm twisting the wrong way. The bass pulses. I count two meters between us and too many bodies; wonder what the signal is to call security, or if they can even break this crowd in time.

“I was tryin' to _help him...!_ Gods; Mother of the Sea, _let go--!"_

No answer from my shipmate. Then a magnified blue-black light. June’s shoulder rises; the rifle's mouth jerks. I hear the Kitalphan’s pinpoint hiss through his gills, the scrape of my palm as it pushes off the pillar. And in the next flash of white, June’s free hand reaches high above the throng, and shapes a signal. Off the edge of the dancefloor, the Arcnos with the bionic eye starts, blinks it green, and hisses into an earpiece. I stop; another patron crashes into my side and moves on with a curse. Whiskey soaks cold into my shoulder. 

“…You can straighten yourself up. Now go to the bar; give the staff a description, and where your friend was last sitting when he took a shot.” My shipmate has already let go; the long bones of his hand come to rest on his hip. His voice is barely there over the music. “Then wait outside. Stay in touch with your friend over the channel and be ready to move him to an emergency room, if they can’t recover his spike.”

The whites of the Kitalphan’s eyes close, and appear again. One crumpled sleeve hangs free. The bassline thumps on.

“The staff will be sure to help you, this time.” June’s promise is bone-dry. How The Arc knows him on sight, at a sign in the dark, I’m not sure I want to know.

Then his shoulders turn, like a door opening; a crack in the crowd widens; the other man bolts through without a word. And as black-lit bodies fill the void on the floor, June stays where he is; his hand slips back up, rubbing at the long line of his nose, the sparse cut of his jaw. When it comes down again, he glances right, and finds my eyes two paces away. 

_‘Clean as a pipe’, is it?_

I stay where I am. Shock crosses June’s face. Then in the next palpitation of lights, his mouth draws into a silent line, shadows beating from the new creases around his eyes. I say nothing either.

The bass doubles. And like a wordless signal that’s been cast, received, and returned, June’s silhouette weaves through the last meters between us. The heel of my boot feels for dropped glasses, and steps back, letting him join me in the cover of the pillar.

“…I thought I was going to find you at the bar.” June has to lean in to be heard over the new song that starts, one shoulder against the rock column. There’s sand still in his hair; cedar in his shirt. The corners of his gray eyes now crinkle in a bare smile: one part pleasure, two parts relief, and a chary question on how much I saw past the pillar.

“Have you seen what’s sitting there now?” 

June checks the bar, craning easily over the crowd; he concedes with a laugh: “Fair enough.” It sounds forced. His tawny eyelashes-- white-gold in the strobe lights-- flick to the splash of whiskey spreading on my shoulder, to my dry cup rimmed with cold. “You, uh, managed to get your order, at least?” 

“In a way. Oppo didn’t have any ice to spare.” I tilt the tumbler to him, chilled ingots rattling once as they swirl. “Will this do the job?”

His low chuckle went unheard in the music. “Honestly? I’m shocked they didn’t come up with this sooner.” But his gaze keeps roaming: up my soiled sleeves to the set of my shoulders; to my back rough with grit, pressed into this pillar by the thick of the crowd; to the stillness of my mouth as I watch him in turn. Under the bruising lights, the lines in his face stay.

When I stay silent on what I witnessed, June does the same. He rights himself and extends a hand: browned from the sun and gallant, knuckles nicked with hair-thin scars we can see even now. “Come on. Let’s find a place where we can breathe a bit easier.” Another faint smile, riding up one corner of his mouth. “…Relatively. It’s the captain’s mast for all of us tonight. The rest of the crew has already gathered downstairs.”

I wonder how much has been said. Then I look again at June-- steady and shy in his smile, his rifle at ease over his shoulder-- and know that he left out the details of how he caught up with Ryona and I.

Half an hour ago, the butt of that rifle smashed into the stomach of the bionic aiming at the Tilaari doctor and I in the alley. Then it flipped itself over and pointed, muzzle-down, into the organic half of the man’s head. _“--Fuck! I'm sorry, man: I tried tellin’ him!”_ Music was shivering the wall. _“Does it matter?”_ The trigger stayed, but the rifle’s mouth followed the man’s back as his pale companion picked him up and dragged him, doubled-over, down the alley and into the traffic of the main street. And it stayed aloft until I brought my hand to the small of June’s back, feeling that clench and twitch of rigid muscle, his rapid-fire breath, that fever-grade heat rising through his clothes and into the air of the alley.

_"Oppo wouldn’t dream of taking Mr. Nyux from Cpt. Lynch’s ship… the best companionsss are often the most dangerous.”_

The dance lights splinter, and darken again; I don’t reach for him. That softness in June’s look flickers like struck water. His hand folds. And in the next beat of ultraviolet, I notice that wisp of skin around his wrist-- two shades paler-- where his rawhide bracelets have rolled back, strung with beads and cracked steel links from the home he’ll never talk about.

 _“…There isn’t much to remember, and I’ll be glad to forget the rest. I’m sorry, sweetheart.”_ Those callused fingers shook as they came away from his wrist, leather thongs crushed from his grip in the dark booth. The tremor in his arm slipped out of my hand. _“…No, I meant to give you a nice evening; I still do. So go on ahead: enjoy yourself. I’ll be all right.”_

My free hand makes its choice; it catches his before it falls: my palm on the back of his like a handshake borrowed by a new species. His dark eyebrows hitch. And I place the chill tumbler in his hand, feeling the warm, battered skin of his fingertips. “…Hold my drink, will you?”

The breadth of his smile says enough. But June still adds, tipping his head with small-town courtesy: “As you wish.”

With one hand on a serving of desert ice, he turns and pits his shoulder through the dancefloor, opening a wake for me half a pace across. Ghost-fires bob through the blacklight; June’s free hand slips through mine, and hangs on: a tall man’s instinct when walking through a crowd of strangers. Patrons move-- only limbs, circuits, and half-lit faces now; fractions of people-- but many of them noticed his sign for security, while the less interested take note now of his rifle, his stance, the extra pistols stuck in his belt and under-arm holster. From the far wall, the doorman’s eye glows green like a beacon.

June has his sights there; he doesn’t see that I’ve dropped my smile, the moment he turned his back.

* * *

In all the stories that collect in places like this, one common thread runs through: it’s the strangest things that tend to find you, more than you’ll ever find them.

It can be a symbol rolling into that final slot. A card slipped under your glass by a ghost. A steel muzzle pressing into your spine over the bathroom sink. A story laid on your lap by a stranger you touch once at the bar.

Or dinner with a man who pulled you out of a shelled city, as mortar fire missed his team. Then argued for a place on their ship, when you realized you left your name behind as well. And then you discover how much of a stranger he truly is. 

I know now it wasn’t the bionic June was aiming for, at that final moment in the alley: it was his ash-pale friend, running them down the block as his rifle drew an instant line to his back.

Sift again through the stories of places like this, and another theme grows clear: it’s how you answer the improbable that can arrive in a moment, that tells you who you still are. You only ever disappear so far. 

I can only imagine these days what people used to say about me in the soot of Silta Vie. The bottom of the guest list, probably. Never where I should be, most of the time. Not exactly good company, unless you enjoy a jab or the wrong question. But if there’s one thing I’m willing to do right, it’s learning. 

When a good man turns to a beast, then back, one side must have been there before the other.

Some things in this life you should only find out for yourself.


	3. Old and Buried Names

For all the debates on its brand of nightlife, The Arc does belong to the founding generation of Nos Vega. You can see from its place in the skyline, growing out of the sierra that shadows the plain. Or from the bones of the building: hewn from raw sandstone and smoothed like a beehive, instead of the cheaper, sun-fired adobe blocks that spread on the second wave of colonists. When two-thirds of the city sink and crumble in Teranium’s rare wet season, The Arc endures.

That also means it’s a lot more acoustic than the newer buildings.

“--All right, Maj. Prick: what’s _your_ protocol for a guy trying to sneak his finger up your ass?” Aya’s voice pipes through the last double-layer of curtains on our left, ringing six paces down the rock passage.

“Wrong question to ask our captain.”

“Reznor, you have the next _three seconds_ to shut it before--” 

“--See: when you start with ‘Maj. Prick’ and end with ‘ass’, it’s only gonna go one way. I thought y’all would have learned that in the Guard.”

Half-a-step ahead, June grimaces my way. His head barely clears the ceiling in these warrens under the bar, wisps of sand drifting onto his hair with every thump of the bass upstairs. 

“ _Sebastian…_ could you please check to see where our ice is?” Ryona sounds like she’s down to half-strength tonight; I don’t blame her. 

June’s hand promptly slips out of mine, like a boy caught with a dirty holo; it recoups as a fist and raps twice, politely, on the wall as we reach the final room on this corridor. “It’d be right here, Doctor.” 

The curtains clank as they flip aside: crossed with chain links that can lock rigid under bolts, or a magnetic field turning around the archway. In the wan light of the cellar rough with bedrock, the crew of the _Andromeda-6_ stand like fugitives from the First Water Wars of Teranium: brushed with dirt, scowling and brittle from a dry night. And armed even now: the chain curtains bunch easily in our engineer’s tungsten-alloy arm, scuffed from old high-velocity strikes.

“About time, Cowboy.” Bash’s grin flashes white in the tunnels; amber light rings his iris. “Five more minutes, and I’d be runnin’ out for ice _and_ Oppo’s blue lotus brew. Best thing in the world for a trigger finger.” Then his bionic eye rivets to my coat, stained half across with whiskey. “…Oh. You want a cup too?”

Past him, a pair of deckled shoulders shift. I speak up: “Oppo has their hands full at the bar tonight. And no ice cubes ready. But we’ve brought a compromise.” 

Bash steps aside; June nods his thanks, salutes the captain, and passes the tumbler to our medic. I bring up the rear: close enough to catch that bloom of alarm from Ryona, safflower eyes sweeping my side. But when they spot nothing broken, they close without a comment. The doctor caps the cup of chilled ingots; she makes her judgment; our pilot jolts on the rum crates as Ryona catches her wrist and pulls it down, steel blocks hissing against her broken knuckles. 

“Keep it simple.” Cpt. Lynch fills the center of the floor, the crates along the walls leaving no room for his shoulders. He fingers the bridge of his nose, already pink, as the curtains clatter shut. “…Do we or do we not have another pisser out there who’ll remember us?”

“None, Captain. It’s a busy floor, tonight.” June’s wrists cross at ease behind him. He doesn’t look at Ryona or me; the doctor and I don’t watch each other.

“So what did you do, Cowboy? Add ‘em to our tab?” That wry, smoke-dark question comes from the corner of the cellar that all eyes miss. Past the captain, in the fold of the wall between the agave liquors and a cracked freezer, Damon twists the point of a knife into his fingertip, testing the skin. His electric blue eyes don’t even watch, trained instead on June. “You took long enough out there, just to bring back your piece of cargo.” 

“Deck swab, thanks,” I throw in, daring the lieutenant to look at me. June drops a warning nod-- _don’t bite; don’t defend me--_ when Aya suddenly answers from the rum crates.

“Lay off them, Damon-- I’m guessing it was a good grind session.”

Our gunman burns pink; his gaze drops like a whiskey glass to his boots. Damon tsks. I glance at Aya-- one fist in a cup of faux ice, lavender lips tipped high-- and realize I’m ready to thank her, for the first time all night. 

_"Enough.”_ The captain chops that order into two syllables. “I don’t want to know _what else_ you idiots were up to tonight: the damage is already done.” He snaps a look; our lieutenant relents, palms opening slow and sardonic. “When we steered the ship to this rustbelt planet, I gave you all _one_ express order; _one_ responsibility: lay low. And in less than two hours, what do I find?” His broad hand cuts the air between us, making the rounds. “Our pilot losing a hand after shaking her ass onstage.” Aya rolls her eyes from the crates. “Our engineer pissing off a dealer.” Bash taps his bionic eye, makes a helpless gesture. “And our ‘guest’ convincing someone to dump a drink on them.” I don’t correct him.

“Through all the shit that you call your shore-leave, have _none of you_ recalled that we landed on the wrong world?” Now a frayed wire burns under his words, heating and bristling that fine accent. “Less than a Standard week since the shoot-up in Silta Vie, and Zovack has already dropped his clan into the Councilors’ seats here. Every oasis city-- and every sector dependent on their pipelines-- is under _their_ jurisdiction; every tongue here expected to swallow their gang colors as the K’Merii walk by, and answer to _them_. So tell me. How many more days will it take before our faces-- our ship profile-- hits the extranet? _Especially_ when you can’t even pass _one night_ without pissing off half the district?” 

Wheels wince up the corridor, snagging on dips in the rock; bottles clack. The low walls hum from the music upstairs. I wonder if I should tell the captain how thin the curtains really are, or if past the threshold of these cellars, you can only hear what you’re allowed to see.

“Not quite that easy, Captain. Even for a crew like ours.”

The captain’s brow ticks; one boot pivots. But our gunner has lost the blush, his face poker-straight as his jibe hits. “The K’Merii have done little to buy Oppo’s loyalty, so far. And I suspect the people’s priority here is to fend for themselves, rather than curry favor with a new Cursan clan.”

Damon snorts, but there’s no disagreement; June nods an apology. “The real loyalty on the ground still belongs to the old syndicates, and their proxies who run the businesses and district ‘protection’. That’s been the rule here for at least two generations. So as far as Teranium sees it, the K’Merii only bring another brand of thuggery… with an extra prick to planetary pride. There's little incentive for the public to report us to Zovack.”

“True enough, Cap’.” Bash’s doleful voice slips in. Half the room turns; he shrugs, taking the irony of defending his old home. “If there’s one thing Teranium thinks it’s got right, it’s that we ain’t Cursan: ‘business acumen’ is our shit. So the cautious cartels and the smallest fish may be payin’ lip service to the K’Merii now, but beyond not lobbin’ bricks at them as they pick up their drinks, there’s no help they’ll be offerin’ on the ground. And no eyes watching for them. Instead, they’ll wait till the oases are back in Teranium hands again. Zovack might have taken the old water deeds, taken out the old Councilors, castrated the syndicates’ official power here… but they’ve got a lot of balls to spare where he can’t see ‘em.”

Lynch’s face says: _thanks for the tip._ But June speaks up again.

“Unfortunately, that’s as much a problem for us in the long run. Any longer than a quarter here, and we may see the map shift. Even to Nos Vega’s borders.” Our Orion man is quiet as ever, but that edge of flint-and-steel has returned, striking off under his words. One scarred thumb hooks on his gun-belt. “Because if there’s one purpose the old Council of Embers served, it’s holding up the polite option: identity, bureaucracy, a legal line to Goldis for the syndicate leaders paying them… and all that dropped with the old Councilors’ heads. Now there’s not a single incentive for the cartels across this world to toe the line. It’s another Water War that Zovack sparked here: one Cursan clan against hundreds of Teranium cartels; hundreds of Teranium cartels against each other. Once the K’Merii lose their hold in the Wastes between oasis cities, no one will be spared. Not civilians, middlemen… or off-worlders like us.”

We listen to the sand drifting in beats from the ceiling; the burn of the light diode by a fish curled in the rock.

“…Well then. What’s your plan through all this, Nyux?”

I turn to Lynch: the current in his eyes has fallen, replaced by a chemical flatness as he watches his gunner. His solid arms fold. And it takes me another moment to see it: the circuit of command switched back by a question, our captain waiting now on one subordinate’s word.

In the silent cellar, June’s hand lifts slowly from his belt. It folds again with the other behind him; a man just a fraction taller than our captain, facing him at attention even as his stillness anchors the ship. 

“…We'd better not test our invisibility," he says at last. "What business we have, we need to wrap it up within the week. Then head for a less exciting locale that’ll test the K’Merii’s interest; maybe the debris field around Kitalpha. The rest I’ll leave to your judgment, Captain: you have me, as always.” His gray eyes are fixed straight on the man before him.

Lynch offers neither word nor expression. But he gives a nod.

A sigh like a steam vent; Aya’s gills shiver as she checks her knuckles, flexing them with a clink of steel. “…Well we just missed the Anniversary. Should be plenty of parking space for us on what’s left of the old moon.”

Ryona’s hand climbs the Kitalphan’s forearm, squeezing. Bash grimaces for effect: “So the graveyard of a planet after the gun towers of Silta Vie-- we’re not runnin’ an insurance scam on the ship, are we?”

"Obviously." 

The spell breaks; there's lukewarm laughter. But half the ship doesn't notice: I catch Damon’s look to the captain as he puts away his knife; the captain’s glance from our gunner to the curtains; our shootist studying the whorls and bones submerged in the floor.

“--You can ask the captain yourself. Sir?” Ryona’s accent adds a few tones to that title, like the start of a lyric. “What’s the verdict for tonight?” The doctor means it rhetorically; she’s now probing the metacarpals in our pilot’s hand, pulling a very Kitalphan hiss out of her. 

Lynch blinks; he feels his nose again, premature lines cutting a grove between his eyes. “…Ayame, Doctor, I’ll see you both back on the ship. You too, Sebastian: we need to make sure Oppo’s junkers aren’t swapping any more parts we can’t afford to lose. Reznor, Nyux: stay groundside tonight. Keep to an ear to the wall on who’s preparing to move on this side of Teranium, and if our new supplies will be coming in on time.”

“Right away, Captain.” June’s answer is automatic, barely a pause between the end of the directive and his offer. One more bow of his head, sand blending into his hair, and his long frame turns to the arch, pulling aside the clatter of curtains and stepping through. He hasn’t looked once at anyone else. In the corner of the cellar, Damon crosses one ankle over the other, his eyes fixed on the roll of the curtains.

“As for _you_ \--” Lynch’s voice stresses that pronoun, like he’s a hair shy of swapping another title; I remember to straighten up “--you’re up for helping the doctor in the med-bay?” 

“ _Come off it_ , Calderon. You think I’ll make a run for the strip club like this?” Aya slips her hand free, points to the swollen mass of her fingers; Ryona catches her again. 

“To be honest, I don’t think I was a nurse before.” The crates scuff; our patient crosses her legs, fixing me the same look as when I asked her to get down from the dancer’s pole. “But maybe I can help Damon and June learn what's happening outside Nos Vega. Extra ears can’t hurt.”

That may have been the wrong answer; I see it from the sudden pull of the captain’s jaw, the bristle in his blue eyes. But he has also caught his pilot’s stance; his navy mind calculates. “…You’ve seen what this pit is like. You can take care of yourself if things get rough?”

His gaze falls pointedly on my scarf, bunched thick and damp around my neck even now.

“I won’t go far tonight, Sir.”

The captain’s mouth knots on one side, like a splash of vinegar hit his tongue. But the ‘sir’ must have worked; he turns to his lieutenant, his order beaten flat: “You got that, Reznor?”

“Like an invite to the ball, Cal.” Damon’s spine stays curled on the wall. 

Maybe he noticed, because for the first time since I woke on the ship, Calderon Lynch lets his nickname slide. His hand hikes in the direction of the tunnels. “Fall out. All hands report on deck at 0800 hours tomorrow, un-poisoned. Ryona, don’t lose our pilot.”

I salute. Half the ship follows him through the dusty curtains: our engineer, our medic, our pilot who tries to vault onehanded down the crates and is half-caught by Ryona. She cracks me a tired smile as she steers Aya out, her skin sapped to slate blue. I think on the hours since she left the ship, and am sorry.

The chains ripple shut, and still. Only then does our lieutenant speak, his stare slipping down my collar like pins of ice.

“There’s something you want, Deck Swab. And whatever it is, I’m not hearing it till there’s twenty grams of sanctioned poison in my system.”

From my coat, I fish out the palm-sized box Oppo passed to me. “Will you settle for ten?”

* * *

“…Gods. They couldn’t’ve picked a better brand than this?” Damon tosses a condom back on the table, leans in his seat, and takes another sip of his krill cocktail. One scarred eyebrow quirks at my look. “Don’t believe the print: you break the lube micro-pellets, and it’s still as dry as cooking foil on your cock. You’re better off wetting the old-fashioned way.”

I catch the foil pack before it slides off the table. “Don’t trust your free protection. Got it.”

“Smart kid. I might give you another chance to bribe me.”

In the lull between shows, the strip club has lifted its lights, tamed its music, merged into the hum of the bar as droids buff the stages clean. But Damon’s knowing squint over his glass strokes enough from the imagination, his cheekbones sharp under the lights, jet lashes dropping heavy on his skin.

It’s also a look that invites me to fail, when it comes to winning his confidence past the night.

‘In this world, there’re all sorts of things you can only find out for yourself,’ he said on the bridge this afternoon, as the _Andromeda-Six_ lined itself up over a field of dead ships. ‘But I can spare you about thirty nasty ways to die and tell you what June _won’t_ about Teranium.’ Damon paused then-- one boot on a seat’s back, summer-sky eyes lit with a private joke--, as he waited for me to tell him I knew all I needed to from our gunner. Then he passed me a dagger from his belt, when I asked for details.

There isn’t much I can peg down about Reznor, in the week since we met past the smoking skies of Silta Vie. But I suspect this ex-hitman enjoys being a font of terrible knowledge. And the people who'll risk a drink.

Tonight I slip the condom back in Oppo’s box of keys, leave it between us, then surrender my hands over the table: still slick with Teflon and dancer’s oil. “I’m out of tricks. All I want to know is why the captain was ready to defer a decision tonight, on June’s word. He’s not the democratic type, usually.”

“You could’ve fooled me.” Damon’s smile runs thin like a knife.

“June knows Teranium pretty well?”

“Our cowboy worked here for a few years before joining the crew. While Bash made a mess in the arenas, June did it on the plains.” Those dark eyebrows hike. “He’s still got the boots in his closet. Burnt steel buckles, motorbike spurs, tooled leather running tight up the calves-- all that good stuff.” 

We have, admittedly, seen a lot of those tall boots since landing in Nos Vega: on dusty, long-legged men stretching out under the tables, smelling like sagebrush and leather, or hitching their feet on the rungs of their barstools, saddle-tight thighs splayed wide and steady as they take their drinks. I sip my colonche.

“…I can’t imagine he was a ranch-hand here, if he can tell what the former Council of Embers _was_ good for.”

Damon looks disappointed his lure didn’t work. “No, most hicks here wouldn’t bother know their Councilors-- just whom they have to pay for water access this season, and if it’s any worse than the last. Oldest form of citizenship in the book.” 

“How did you meet June, then?”

“Unhappy accident. A lot like your case.”

“Why did the captain hire him?”

“Because he’s a fucking good shot. What did you think, after walking around this place?”

“I think people respect a man who can turn your shoulder like he's turning a bike wrench. The gun is optional.”

What jokes are left die in Damon’s eyes. His tumbler drops on the table. “You’ve got fifty words to tell me what the hell happened between you, June, and Ryona tonight. The cowboy’s a terrible liar.”

 _That’s a matter of opinion._ But I keep that to myself, turn my cup around, and oblige the lieutenant with a story that threads the evening together: two tonics with June, here in the strip club; Aya’s scuffle while our eyes were turned; how we split up to find Ryona; how I found her first, wiping the spit off her hair from a bionic who recognized her as Tilaari. The freon runoff I caught and threw from the pipes in the alley; the winch of a tungsten arm sliding apart, a muzzle rising; June’s answer with the butt of his rifle when he arrived, then almost shooting the bionic in the head until his Kitalphan mate intervened, fumbling an apology and pulling him from the alley. The same man’s unhappy arrival on the dance floor, searching for his friend’s Rust spike, and June’s welcome in the form of a shoulder almost dislocated, then a favor when the man cringed to silence; his wordless answer when he saw I saw him.

We passed fifty words four minutes ago. But Damon doesn’t say a thing until the end.

“…What’d you say those two men look like?”

“A bionic human and a Kitalphan. The one who recognized June is on the stocky side, decked with rings, wears a short, metal-capped jacket with a raised collar for his gills. The other one--” the burn of freon comes back to my nose, the sharp reek of oil as the gun muzzle surfaced-- “already replaced his eyes with synthetic ones, blue. Has a number of cybernetic veins under his skin. The shotgun is mounted inside his left forearm.” 

“Illegal, even here. Of course, every altered punk in five wears it that way.” Damon says nothing more for a long moment, watching the buffer on the nearest stage wind up a dancer’s pole. Then his hand rises, rakes through his short-cropped hair. “ _…_ Fuck _._ Aren’t you a lightning rod for disaster?”

My neck comes upright. But Damon’s fingers clamp testily on his glass, weighing it for what’s left of his drink. “Save us all this shit next time and screw the cowboy in orbit-- then there’s only Cal to piss off.”

“So you _know_ how June knows those two.”

“Not yet.” The ex-hitman’s face is all stone. “It sounds like it’s just the fat one. Or it could add up to nothing: ancient history biting back for a night.” He glares down his glass, his cocktail too low. “Either way, that cowboy has a few things to explain when he gets back.”

“If it’s ancient history, why should it matter? He got his point across to the men who almost shot us.”

Damon’s stare flicks up like a switchblade. But he says nothing.

I roll my sleeves down, elbows folding on the greasy table. “Judging from tonight, he's very qualified as a hired gun. But if it’s not really his job to send a message to city brutes, or to leave it to the captain to chart our course through Teranium… then who is June to all of you?" 

The one time I’ve seen our intel agent lost for words was two hours ago: at the bar with the captain, the air above them hot with steam and a first question of home, seven days after Zovack’s coup. That familiar look across the booth tells me there’s a reprise coming.

What I don’t expect is an answer: “…Even we can’t really tell.”

I keep watching him. In the raised lights of the strip club, Damon’s look is flat and unflinching, all gallows humor at rest.

“…How does that work on an armed ship?” 

“Badly.” That black humor revives; he cracks a smile. “For me, at least: I fucking hate other johns who keep secrets on my watch.”

I’m not surprised. For three days after we met, Damon slipped needles of muscle contractant to Ryona, in case her latest patient ‘breaks that gods-awful alibi: who’d claim amnesia in a fucking warzone?’

Tonight the ex-hitman is quiet; a truce hovers over the table between us. He swirls the last of his cocktail, following the shallow turns of cobalt liquor. “…You really want to know about him, don’t you?”

His tone stands somewhere between rhetorical and real. I don’t answer.

“Then I’ll save you two years of frustration: take only the answers that June gives you. And trust he doesn’t mean to kill you with what he won’t say.” Damon’s eyes meet mine. “He’s a well-traveled bastard; crossing more of Teranium that even Bash has. So the captain loans him his ear, because there are certain brands of experience that’re hard to come by in this System. Even for a crew like ours. June-- so far-- has been good on applying what he knows to help the ship, instead of screwing us over as nine out of ten men would, in his shoes.” A rust-dry smile. “…At least, he won’t do it intentionally. We still have to see about tonight.” 

Onstage, the buffers slow, then grind anew as they cross a stain on the plexiglass. I remember to reach for my drink. “You really think those men might be trouble?”

“Depends if you think June was ready to break someone’s arm tonight for remembering him.”

My cup stills. And that’s all the answer Damon needs.

He steps out of the booth, not a sound from his boots, that long black duster shrugging around him like an extra shadow. “…There might be a use for you tonight, Deck Swab.” His voice is oiled smooth once again; he’s folding down one sleeve, not even looking at me. “The cowboy should be finishing up downstairs, more or less. Find him in the western warrens-- that’ll be a left, then a right turn from the first hall where the private dining rooms are. Take the eighth archway on your right. Rap four times on the wall-- fast-- before you call him, so he knows you're not there with an unasked 'escort'.” 

“Besides you?"

The ex-assassin ignores my jab. With a click, his deft fingers loosen a pin, hidden in the rolls of his sleeve, then pinches it to slide open a minute communicator. The polymer spike balances on his fingertip, frail as a diatom shell, as it crosses the table to me. “Disposable comm line,” he answers my look. “Encrypted signal, though limited strength. And one-to-one only, leading directly to me." His voice drops flat. "...Take it. You'll need it tonight." 

In a heartbeat, I recall the web of tension stretching between three of the men in the liquor cellar; the captain’s look and the lieutenant’s glower when I volunteered to stay groundside; the look he wouldn't spare as June left ahead of everyone else.

Now I stand. “What's he meant to do tonight? Why do you think it might earn him attention?”

Damon’s answer holds no edge: “Exactly as our captain said-- making sure some new supplies are arriving on time. Only it’s his cargo, kid. Not ours.”

He sees my next question; he moves first, his hand quick as a dart as it reaches in and pierces the bug’s micro-pin through the fold of my scarf. My hand moves to catch his, half a second too late.

“…More ancient history. But that’s June’s story to tell, not yours or mine.” His fingers recede. Those blue eyes press like pack ice as he repeats: “Western gallery, eighth archway on your right; four raps on the wall. When he lets you into the cargo room, tell him: we’ve got a surplus. And tell him I’m looking into it tonight, but he’ll need to stay downstairs." He watches me for a moment. "Help him as you need to; keep the questions minimal; wait for my call once I confirm it’s clear upstairs. Watch his reaction, though, when you mention that Kitalphan. And update me if he does talk.”

The pin in my scarf threatens to puncture my thumb. “…But if he doesn’t?”

Damon snags his cocktail from the table, draining it. “Well I suspect you’ve got the best chance of both of us in getting him to share. I’m stuck checking other channels.” His black brows tilt as he sets his glass down; he places two fingers on Oppo’s box of keys, and slides it back. “Do what you will, Deck Swab.”

“Didn't you say ‘screw him in orbit’?”

“What’s done is done. And you know foreplay already, don't you, kid?” But that shark’s tooth smile doesn’t open; it lifts quiet and wry on one side, like it’s one more lesson on Nos Vega. “All you have to give most nights is a face and a promise. What keeps most people awake is the loneliness.” 

Mock magnolia hits the air, sweetens, then darkens the last misters come to life, blending in musk and chile, the buzz of synthetic pheromone. The droids have gone. In the wane of lights, the next troop of dancers enters the strip club: bracing their knees on the slick stages, trench-coats shed like skins on the floor.

“…Get out of here before the crowd grows.” With a flick of goodbye, Damon is gone: just another black coat moving through the club, dusted with sand at the hems. I stay by the table that the droids missed, watching the colonche in my cup looking more like blood in the falling lights.

It is-- I see as the gloom comes back-- the same booth where June and I sat for our tonics. The lights have aged the cracked, mock-leather seats; knife-cuts lit all along the gray, blank face of the table.


End file.
